We get it. You don’t like sports. Who cares. I think there’s validity to sport and I enjoy watching and playing many of them. Has capitalism ruined everything the common person holds dear in most sports? Yes. I literally wrote an article about it.
But sport itself isn’t inherently bad and being like “herp derp sportsball” makes you sound like a basement dweller incel who wants to shoot up their school because they think jocks get all the girls instead of the kind gentlesirs who study the blade.
A lot of people are only exposed to sport as a tv show and a product, but most sports have roots that go back hundreds of years, are very influenced by working class history and local teams are often at the heart of communities (although many have been stolen and turned into just another generator of capital).
Sports have also been an arena for the class struggle - aristocrats and workers battling it out over who should be allowed to play and control different games at different time, “amateurs vs professionals” (i.e. those who were wealthy enough to be able to fund their sporting career as a hobby vs talented workers who needed to be paid to play) was a controversy in sports for decades. Even today there are many teams run and owned by fans in some sports, and the struggle between workers who have been watching their teams for decades (even through multiple generations of families) vs their indifferent capitalist owners is ongoing.
Also playing sports is fun and you will make friends and get healthy.
Read up on sport in 20th century socialist states, it was treated with massive investment and athletes were awarded high honour, it was tied in to public health (along with often being integrated with making people fit enough to serve in the army to defend against all the capitalist countries wanting to invade you for trying to not be capitalist). Even in capitalist countries today grassroots sport is one of the only real community/social circles people have that isn’t tied to working for a capitalist.
:geordi-no: herp derp sportsball
:geordi-yes: effort post explaining the problems in modern day professional sports
Growing up as a man here in the US who never gave a shit about sports and was always horrible at them myself, I was essentislly treated as a deviant. A malformed citizen. If I’m honest, It was othering and traumatic.
In the ensuing decades I have certainly, at times, over reacted to these childhood traumas and, in turn, judged others for their puzzling enthusiasm for a game, but have long since settled into a equilibrium of sorts where I just don’t give a shit if anyone loves sports so long as I don’t need to agree with them. Basically the same stance I take on religion. Whatever gets you through the day.
But shocker, I still don’t fucking care even a little bit about any sporting event. I will never care about any sporting event. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
lmao shut up ball nerd :farquaad-point:
Practicing sports can be good. Official competitions and the worldwide organizations that mantains most of them are shit period and I don’t realy think I’ll change my opinion on this, thanks.
TL;DR: Good- Incentivizing local competitions, incentivizing children to practice sports for health benefits, investing in infraestructure to allow both of these to happen.
Absolutely fucking terrible: Literaly everything else like massive worldwide competitions that siphon money from governments, every single massively corrupt national and international sports organization, the creation of the reactionary working class privileged group who end up completely disconnected from their origins, all of the inevitable tribal conflict as a result of alienation that is relived through sports(read about the fanaticism of criquet in India or all the football violence among rival fans in Brazil/Argentina.
You tell me why third world footballers tend to be such massive chuds despite growing up in the favelas.
And all of the billions spent over decades, money that went from public governments to build “infrastructure” to hold these World Cup/Olympic games/F1 races etc just resulted in massive economic crisis and further increase in economic inequality not to mention government austerity. Much of this tends to happen against the democratic wishes of the majority of the people(e.g Brazil World Cup and new F1 track in Rio) and some of these were the largest transfer of wealth between from the public to the private sector ever only realy unmatched by Qualitative Easing and large scale privatizations
Finaly the Chinese approach is far different. AFAIK China invests in a really broad range of sports and tries to give working class people a viable alternative path. China also isn’t suffering from having to make choices between building a shiny new stadium or a hospital/school, it is not held hostage by IOC/FIFA or whatever. And while I can’t speak to how violent/passionate Chinese fans tend to be at the very least I’ve never heard people in China rioting like it happens in the west.
socialist sport is good.
capitalist sport is bad
this aint complicated. the superbowl is the greatest display of US fascism and consumerism you can witness, and i really cannot begrudge people hating on it.
The superbowl is fascism is my new favorite take on this site, narrowly beating out “bedtime is fascism” :che-laugh: :che-laugh: :che-laugh: :che-laugh:
20 years from now, in an even more explicitly fascist America: “Oh yeah sure, everything is fascism to you guys, huh? The weekly police marches? The public executions of dissidents? Immigrants disappearing into train carriages and never being seen again? How on earth are we gonna be taken seriously as a movement if we just say that everything around us is fascism? People will get tired of hearing that shit and you’ll just alienate them from your movement even more.”
What you say is true 100% but the point isnt about just hating on stuff like superbowl or capitalism ruining aspects of sports. The vast majority of consumption of , let alone participation in, sports by billions of working class people is still very far from being superbowl-ish. So generalized hate and mockery for “sportsball” or any positibility of it being good and positive even under capitalism that can be found as a reaction in the left and not towards specific consumerist domination and capitalist corruption of it examplified by extremes like superbowl makes you indeed seem like an edgy unlikable new atheist
capitalism making sport horrible is in most the US pre high school i serioisly contest the assertion most of sport is proletarian
Yeah it seems like the explicit purpose of a lot of competitive sports in the US is to make people compete with each other and create anger. It reinforces the whole capitalist competition narrative that everyone needs to constantly be in conflict with each other, whether that’s competing companies or entire countries or fellow humans.
i mean i was more talking about the fact you have to pay for sport and it gets very expensive but competition is not necessarly a social good yeah
Leftists hating sport is so weird as a non American. Maybe it’s because American sports broadcasts are filled with ads and fash military nonsense, and Americans don’t have the opportunity to play sports themselves due to their horribly designed cities and crushing work hours, bit but still. Hating the fundamental concept of competition with your fellow humans is just always going to be weird to me.
Obviously I hate the capitalistic nonsense and most sporting organisations, but competing against others is fun in the right environment.
My entire direct experience with playing sports involved getting called gay a lot and my parents signing me up for stuff against my will and it killed any prior enthusiasm I had.
I don’t think it’s a leftist thing though, it’s an online American thing to hate sports. Go ask any weird libertarian forum what they think about football. Because sports here are only two things: memories from high school (where you were a bully or bullied) or a capitalist product with military theatrics attached. The only time I hear about sports being anything else around here is a way to get laid on the weekends.
People offline are usually indifferent or into it.
I talk shit about the NFL and college football to my family and coworkers all the time.
The criticisms need to be directed at the system, like how billionaire owners get 52% of all profits, can move teams whenever they want - and use that threat to bully cities into giving them tax money for stadiums. For fucking billionaires.
Or college sports, which is dominated by the likes of easy-to-hate Alabama and Ohio State (the best players go to the best teams, so it self-perpetuates and will always be that way), schools often barely educate their athletes, funding for students and education instead goes to lavish “athletic facilities.”
The most unconscionable part of college sports is how if players get injured before going pro there is no recourse for them. They’re just out of millions of dollars, permanently injured, and with few career prospects. This goes for college basketball and baseball too, but the violent nature of Amerikkkan football means that anyone that plays in college will come out with at least one permanent injury. Usually bad knees/hips at a minimum, neck or back problems if they aren’t lucky.
Knew a guy that tore his ACL a month into freshman jv football, walks with a limp ten years later. Absolute insanity
Oh yeah, this is very legitimate criticism, and it only serves to hurt the sport to continue on this way.
